Wednesday, December 6, 2006

GLUTEN-FREE CORNBREAD RECIPE, A CHRISTMAS FAIRE, AND FAMILY VISITS

All corn cornbread!

Been a long time between blogs! My cousin Chris from Vancouver came for a visit last weekend with my youngest daughter Justine, and my youngest grandchild (and grandson). Despite having to trudge up and down the 1/2-mile long, quite steep driveway covered with snow, we had a great time! LGS (Littlest Grandson) is talking up a storm and is such a doll! At my son's house we had a family party with their 3 girls and my daughter Sarah's family with her 3 girls. Littlest Grandson had all the girls under control, I can tell you!

Saturday and Sunday were the days for the annual Denman Is. Christmas Craft Faire. On Sunday my son Tim's daughters, all budding cooks, had a half-day booth. The oldest, made snowflake shortbread cutout cookies and caramel corn to sell, and the two younger girls made homemade lollipops, mounted on a "lolllipop tree" that my son made. Everything was delicious, and the lollipops, though "freeform", looked beautiful and were very long-lasting. They liked making them so much that next year they plan to make a totally organic version with all kinds of different natural flavorings and colors! Tim already has an idea for a rainbow display, too. They sold lots and made their own Christmas money!

I went back to Vancouver with Chris and Justine to meet my big brother, also Tim, who was coming from California. We had another fun family gathering at my cousin Chris's house, with my sister and her family. (We ate take out from the Chinese vegan Buddhist restaurant, the Bo Kong! (Update-- now the "Whole Vegetarian".)

I brought Tim back home to visit more family, especially our 89-year-old mom. Now we can drive up our driveway-- yay!

Before I left I made this yummy cornbread-- with no wheat flour, so celiacs can eat it! It's nice and corny!

I didn't make them, anonymous, but I gave my daughter-in-law some recipes I found online to follow.

To make everything organic, for the lollipops you just use organic sugar, organic corn syrup, natural organic flavorings and color.

http://www.naturesflavors.com/

has organic natural food colorings and flavors.

Here are more organic food colorings;http://www.seelecttea.com/index.php?cPath=41

and more organic flavor oils and extracts:http://www.goldcoastinc.com/organic/

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/organic_flavor_extracts.htm

http://www.flavor.com/organic1.htm

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Here is the recipe for lollipops that the girls and their mom used: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/recipe-lollipops.html

They didn't have molds, but just made freeform lollipops. The molds have to be metal, if you use them. Like these:http://www.lollipopmolds.com/page3.html

or here;http://www.candylandcrafts.com/christmascandy.htm

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For the cookies, use organic unbleached white flour, organic Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread, and organic sugar. Use organic powdered sugar, organic cornstarch, and natural vanilla, organic if you can find it, if your favorite recipe calls for any of these products.

They used snowflake cookie cutters like these:http://www.amazon.com/Snowflake-Cookie-Cutters-Set-4/dp/B00068VBBI

Evidently, white edible glitter is made only from gum arabic. Some manufacturers add color and even flavoring or sweetener to edible glitter. I don't know if this is possible at home, but might be worth a try.

However, today I changed the order of preparation around, and I didn't have to "delump" the batter as I usually do.

After adding the boiling water to the second batch of cornmeal, I added the melted Earth Spread, then the soymilk/lemon juice (whisking all the way). I mixed the flax seed with the first batch of cornmeal, then added the dry mixture to the wet, instead of the other way around (whisking the dry ingredients into the wet as well).

I'm looking forward to my cornbread tonight, which should be ready in 13 minutes!

I found this recipe when I did a Google search for gluten-free vegan cornbread (my hubby is gluten, dairy, and egg-free, among other things, and it's new, so we're still looking for recipes).

I baked it up last night using Bob's Red Mill Corn Grits rather than regular cornmeal (which gave it an awesome grainy texture) and I was too lazy to melt the Earth Balance so I substituted canola. Guess what, there's only one square left and we're going to have to arm-wrestle for it. :) Thanks so much for the recipe!

This is such a great base recipe. I adapted it slightly, using a little less baking powder, sweetened mashed rhubarb and quince in place of the cold liquid ingredients, a touch more water and olive oil instead of the earth balance to make a sort of loaf/cake thing. Delicious! Thanks Byanna.

i made this recipe last night. the top looked bizarre- there was a a smaller square that started about an inch and a half in that was a lighter shade yellow. do you have any idea why this happened? the only thing i could think of that happened was that the soymilk rose to the top??

Ok, this time I made a couple of changes. I didn't have any earth balance, so I just used oil.

After adding the boiling water to the 2/3 cup of cornmeal, I added in the oil, and beat it in. Then, a little bit at a time, I beat in the liquid ingredients (soymilk, lemon, etc etc) a little bit at a time, so that it would sort of not form lumps while mixing it all together. I found that the qucik-steamed cornmeal tends to get clumpy to the max, so I found that beating in the liquid ingredients a little at a time controlled that. It was definitely worth it.

Then, I mixed it all together with the dry ingredients, and scooped it into nonstick cupcake pans (with a generous squirt of oil at the bottom of each little cup, but no paper liner), and baked at 350F for 25 minutes. They came out PERFECTLY. They rose up nice and high, and look all crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Very tasty recipe. Thank you so much for sharing it.

I realised I'd made a huge error when mixing this all together, seeing that it was all the yellow corn at the bottom and all the milk floating on top unintegrated, so I looked at the packaging again and seeing that it says 'sémola de maíz' (I'm living in Spain) I looked up if there was a difference between corn semolina and cornmeal... Turns out, big difference! In a rescue attempt I mixed in 3 tablespoons cornstarch (I think you call this cornflour in the States) and heated it on the hob for a few minutes until it was pretty much cooked polenta. After 20 minutes in the oven, this turned out pretty tasty, and I will definitely make it again. I'm not sure if I would have achieved the same result by simply cooking corn semolina and milk then baking it though, or did the extra ingredients still add something to it do you think?Anyhow, remembering that I have seen yellow cornmeal in the Latin American section of my local international market I will try it according to the recipe next time!Thanks!

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